Current data communication techniques, such as Fibre-Channel (FC) and FC over Internet Protocol (FCIP) Write Acceleration and FCIP Tape Acceleration have certain restrictions as the intelligence is associated with the end-points of a metropolitan area network (MAN)/wide area network (WAN) inter-switch links (ISLs). Write acceleration techniques allow for port-channels but not equal-cost multi-path (ECMP) links. Tape-acceleration techniques that extend across FC exchanges do not allow for port-channels.
Acceleration services solve these limitations by abstracting protocol intelligence out of the end-points of the ISLs, placing them in service engines in the fabric and redirecting the traffic flows that need to be accelerated to these service engines. This makes the service topology independent and allows for multiple parallel links (port-channels or ECMP).
Acceleration services are useful for applications such as remote replications or tape vaulting for disaster recovery. Such applications require high resiliency and increased performance. In order to satisfy these requirements, the acceleration service provides high resiliency against failures of the ISLs in a MAN or WAN, and optimally utilize the available MAN/WAN ISL bandwidth, even if it is an aggregate of multiple low-throughput links. End-user applications do not see any disruption in traffic if the MAN/WAN ISLs fail or are brought down for maintenance purposes as long as there is at least one available link that interconnects the two sites.